Element Lockscreen Now Available in Cydia!

I don’t know about you guys but it seems like FOREVER since we wrote that the Element lockscreen concept was going to become reality. Well, it looks as though it has finally made it’s way into Cydia. A few days ago, I was perusing (yes, perusing) Cydia and to my astonishment what did I see… Element. At first I thought it was a theme or maybe some random look-a-like but after some further exploration I found it to be the real deal. However, I’m going to warn you right away, don’t get too excited this is definitely a first release.

The lockscreen was released in Cydia as a cydget. For those of you who do not know what Cydget is, it is “framework for managing lock screen plugins.” Which means, like most cydgets, it runs a little slow. Once you install the app (you will also want to install the Cydget ‘app’ if you do not already have it installed), you will then need to go into your stock Settings application under the Cydget option and tap on Element to activate it on your loackscreen. Once you have done that, you can go into your stock Settings and find the Element option where you will see some basic Setting for the Element lockscreen.

In the Settings for Element you have the ability to allows the options on the lockscreen to expand/contract by tapping on the header (a must for me). You will also find some basic settings for each option on the lockscreen; Weather, Missed Calls, Calendar Events, Unread Emails, SMS, Facebook and Stocks.

Now, a few things about how the lockscreen actually runs. It’s slow… pretty slow. I also noticed that it doesn’t update extrememly accurately. The weather tends to be decently close to correct as well as the Calendar and Text Messages. However, I did find the Email, Facebook and Missed Calls can be a little behind. It can also be a little confusing because it will list your last three missed calls whether you have already seen them or not. However if it is a new missed call, that you haven’t seen, it will be highlighted yellow. The same is true for text messages.

The lockscreen does have a few other useful options such as the ability to swipe on a missed call and call that number directly from your lockscreen. You can also tap on a text message and it will open your stock text messaging application to that specific text message. There is a catch. If you have a passcode on your device, you are still able to ‘swipe to call’ which opens your stock phone application without having to enter the passcode. It does bring you back out to the lockscreen once the call is finished but, if you are a stickler on security, you may want to turn off the Allow Dialing option in the Settings. The text message tap does not work if you have a passcode on your device… even if you have the option turned on in the Settings.

One of my favorite features in the ability to tap on the weather widget on the lockscreen and have it switch between the cities you have set-up in the stock Weather application (this works best if the AutoRotrate option is turned off in the Settings).

Overall, I love the look of the lockscreen. It gives me the basic information I am looking for in a lockscreen mod and it runs pretty smoothly. Now, if we could just get it to load faster… like a lot faster.

ScreenShots

Comments

This looks sweet! Cant wait to get home to sit down and get this installed. Hopefully the improvements will come thick and fast now that its here. Many thanks to Saurik and assoc who’ve really turned out one of the best looking and what looks to be most useful mods for the iphone.

I found this last week on cydia and was surprised that their was not more fanfare about it, or even maybe any advance notice. I think their is a lot of possibilities for this app, but right now there aren’t enough cydgets to get my interest. I have both lockinfo (on my homepage) and intelliscreen (on my lockpage) bc they both have different things i like. I like the setup and look of lockinfo. I wish you could dial missed calls and voicemail from it like element. I also wish that you could open up on your rss feeds and weather a full article page popup balloon like in intelliscreen with clickable links, instead of just a 2-3 sentence summary like lockinfo has.

I don’t like the setup of intelliscreen but i love i can read full rss news/sports/weather stories right from a pop balloon with links and other features, but the setup and look is clunky, plus underground weather seems to not work anymore for me.

Element has potential but i don’t really care about facebook, twitter and other (useless to me) cydgets instead of ones like i mentioned above, and also i couldn’t really get cydgets i downloaded from cydia to work with it. So i will keep an eye on it for the future but i can’t really use it for now.

If someone would work to combine the great look and feel of lockinfo, and combine it with the features and functions of intelliscreen then you would have a winner.

I use Lockinfo as well, with the most recent update I keep getting a bug where my lock screen will just be blank like 80% of the time when I turn on my phone, any ideas? And about Element, I absolutely love the look of it, but I use a 2g so the slowness would probably be unbearable for me :( the Facebook plug-in looks really nice too, something I wish Lockinfo would incorperate.

Looks like a great app but I’ve tried many similar apps and usually delete it within 3 daysfor one reason or another, I can’t stand unresponsive apps, or apps that don’t update properly. The only thing I really like to look Aton my lock screen is SMS messages and I already have quickreply SMS for that. You van pretty much reply from anywhere by double tapping the text notification, I’ve also fount that most lock info addons don’t play nice with quickreply. The only reason I could see myself getting this is for the calender view. But still great post didn’t even notice that available on Curia until you mentioned it.

Tried it yesterday and at first it seemed to be a great app but today it started crashing every few minutes. The screen became totally unresponsive so i couldn’t do anything but wait.
After a few minutes i managed to get on my Homescreen. In the meantime Element refreshed about every minute (i saw the small wheel in the middle of the screen) but nothing happened and the phone was frozen. Emails and other stuff weren’t displayed.

This happened 5 times so i deleted Element and went back to Intelliscreen. Will try Element again if they release an update.

wow, don’t know what to say…the comments above are accurate. its waaaaaay to slow and buggy. seriously, i’d have to say don’t even try it, wait for the next version (that doesn’t use cydget). the unresponsiveness will aggravate you. i’ve used intelliscreen & lockinfo. i’ve purchased both but love Lockinfo, get Lockinfo.

Something I’ve noticed, since having installed Element (and it survives removal/reinstall of Element, as well) is that now when I have new emails and/or calendar events, I have a tap-able icon for that app on my lock screen…and I can not seem to locate a setting to remove it.

I like the set up of Element on Date and Weather than Lockinfo. Lockinfo has more plugin and options for setting including layout screen. Speed wise, Element is slower but I am sure it will get improve soon since this is first version. Status bar on Element should be thinner as it is now to me is too thick for iPhone screen.
In Summary of my own opinion:
Pro/Element: Allows for App Launch, Looks great on Clock and Weather layout
Con/Element: Slow, less option of setting, less plug-in as Lockinfo

Pro/Lockinfo: Fast, More options to change and move around on screen, more plug-in
Con/Lockinfo: No App Lauch allowed directly from screen but only for viewing

One thing I will never forget to say thanks to programmer of these application. Again, mucho thanks

lockinfo does launch some plugins from LS. If iphone is not locked email, sms, Phone & plugins like Facebook launch to application. The Tweet plugin allows you to “tap” a user and reply from LS. Lockinfo is nice!

To those of you who say you like LockInfo better, more power to you! LockInfo would NEVER show the weather for my city, it would always show Luxembourg and they had a so-called “fix” wherein you had to edit the config.js file. To someone who is not that technically savvy and especially wants PAID apps to ummm, let’s see… WORK, that’s not an acceptable resolution (that and the fact that JordanDev deleted my comments on his website – hmmm, interesting since they were just feedback and a question).

As soon as I installed Elements… guess what? It WORKED!!! That’s all I ask for. Does anyone know where I can donate to the developer of this program via PayPal? They made my day!!!

High,
after downloading Elements it doesn’t appear on iPhone lockscreen.
Whatever I do, the original Apple locckscreen persists and changing of general settings provides nothing.
Do you have any idea what’s wrong with my installation ? Do I have to activate cydgets and how can I do this ?
Thank you for helping

Can’t let you get away with this one – just because Element is free doesn’t immediately make it better. Element is slow, and at times unresponsive. LockInfo is snappy, unobtrusive, and clean. For my purposes, spending the $5 to get something that works and is fast, rather than spending nothing to suffer through a slow, tedious interface is worth every penny.

It’s pretty much worthless to me to have to sit and wait for Element to load when I could just as easily (and far more rapidly) unlock and go into my OS to check whatever it is I need to check. LockInfo bridges that gap – all the pertinent information is displayed on the lockscreen the minute you wake your phone. Further, it doesn’t sap your battery life any more than you would expect, while Element has a tendency to drain battery for random reasons.

I have installed this wonderfull looking app only for it to crash te second it appears. I then have to go into recovery mode and hope i can put my password in before it displays or else its anothe ten minute wait in recovery.